Before the devil knows you’re dead
10/06/2017 1 Comment
“May you be in heaven a full half-hour before the devil knows you’re dead.”
Well, that went better than I thought it would. Never in my lifetime have the cards been stacked so firmly in the incumbent party’s favour and yet somehow the most remarkable reversal happened.
A couple of months ago, everything was going Theresa’s way. The Lib Dems were nowhere and the Labour Party seemed to be more interested in arguing amongst themselves and undermining their leader than they were about actually opposing anything.
In such circumstances, with the opinion polls pointing to the biggest Tory majority since the war, the temptation was too great. Before the election, Theresa’s majority wasn’t huge but it was easily enough to get her through the next three years without a problem. But why accept that when you could smash the opposition out of the park for the next five?
Oops.
The media are referring to it as a failed gamble but a couple of month’s back, when the election was called, it was nothing of the kind. It was, what Americans would call, a slam-dunk. Or at least it should have been, but Theresa failed to take one small point into account – she is diabolically incompetent.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that she is far and away the worst Prime Minister in my lifetime. Dave had awful policies but at least he knew how to make them sound good to a lot of people. Maggie did some truly horrific things, especially to the poor, but at least she had the guts to fight her corner rather than ducking debates.
By announcing a snap election, Theresa had the chance to catch the opposition on the hop but what transpired seemed more like she’d caught herself on the hop. A car crash manifesto of ill-conceived, uncosted, focus-group bullshit policies was released and no one liked it.
In contrast, Labour released the most ambitious and progressive manifesto of our generation. It was as brilliant as it was unexpected and if that weren’t enough, it was costed too.
While Theresa tried to side-step criticism of her manifesto U-Turns, (Nothing has changed!), Jeremy knew every line of his manifesto and stood firmly behind it. (You like my manifesto? Put it to the testo.*)
While Theresa avoided debates and attended only media events that had been carefully choreographed by her spin team, Jeremy did the complete opposite – he seemed happy to stand behind his policies in front of the media and happy to debate them with the public.
Let’s face it, he was never going to be one of those polished politicians, trained in the dark arts of hand gestures and how to avoid answering questions. He didn’t even take David Cameron’s advice of how to dress like a posh person. What he did do was the only thing he knew – being himself and actually caring about the people whose lives would be affected by his policies. In spite of the daily character assassinations by The Sun and The Daily Mail… it worked.
The parliamentary Labour Party will now surely get behind him and build on the fantastic platform he has made. Things look good.
In contrast, Theresa is now dead man walking. She took her party from stable majority to hung parliament with a completely unnecessary election. She told them she’d win a landslide but ended up costing a lot of them their jobs. Her speech yesterday was the most perfect example of denial. She didn’t even acknowledge that the result was a bit disappointing, let alone the reality that it was catastrophic.
And now we get to watch her running around, courting the anti-gay, anti-abortion DUP, with full knowledge that it will reverse much of the huge effort that has gone into stabilising Northern Ireland. It’s shameful how desperate she is to stay in power.
Today she fired her two closest advisers and as more rats leave the sinking ship, The Sun and The Daily Mail have abandoned her – even some cabinet members are telling her to go.
But don’t worry, Theresa – it’s much worse than you think. Do what you need to do but please realise – the electorate will never take you seriously again. You are done.
Enjoy your half hour – the clock is ticking.
RedEaredRabbit
*Ok, Jeremy didn’t say that. I might have accidentally quoted Sultans of Ping F.C.
RedEaredRabbit 